Beware! Laughter is highly contagious

Twenty members of the Taiwan Laughter Club gathered in Taipei to share a hearty laugh to celebrate the World Laughter Day.

Twenty members of the Taiwan Laughter Club gathered in Taipei on Sunday to share a hearty laugh to celebrate the World Laughter Day.

The hour-long event ended with the reading of the message for the World Laughter Day by Madan Kataria, the Indian physician who founded the Laughter Club of India in 1995. Since then, Kataria’s laughter movement has spread all over the world.

Led by founder Chen Dar-cheng, the club members and their children chanted “Ho-Ho-Ho, Ha-Ha-Ha” several times before breaking into belly laughs with names like lion laugh, milkshake laugh and inner laugh.

As if they were not laughing enough, one club member, wearing a doctor’s white gown and holding a giant styrofoam syringe, gave each club member a shot of “laugh medicine” on their backs, triggering shrieks and laughs from each recipient.

Currently there are some 5,000 laughter clubs in 40 countries, 3,000 of them in India. He has named the first Sunday of May as the World Laughter Day.